You Played Violent Games - Why Can't Your Kids? 501
An anonymous reader writes: "On the Wired site, Clive Thompson has up an article that points out a sobering truth: gamers are getting older. Folks who grew up playing videogames like Doom and Quake are now facing parental decisions with their own kids regarding appropriate content. Thompson cites well known gamer dads like Kotaku's Brian Crecente, discussing some of the approaches folks educated in gaming take with their own offspring: '"Everybody knows, as an adult, that the world is not always a nice place," Crecente told me. "But I don't want him to know that yet. I want him to have a childhood." So he disallows games with "realistic" combat, like World War II titles, or Resistance: Fall of Man, but permits highly cartoony shooting, like Starfox on the Nintendo DS -- since he regards it as essentially as abstract as playing cops and robbers with your fingers as guns.' Where do you think gamer parents should draw the line? If you have kids, what approach are you taking to introducing them to gaming? How old is 'old enough' to start fragging?"
My vision on things (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know what I'd do, but I do know what my parents did... both non-gamers, but my dad was (and is) quite proficient with computers. Our advantage was that the computer came "late in the game", so I was about 12, my brother 14 and my little sister was 8.
Computers were expensive and we had to share one computer. My dad or mother didn't say "one hour", no, they said it had to be fairly distributed. The system introduced was simple and self-regulating: write down what you were playing and at what hour you started and stopped. Your siblings could come in at any time and say "hey, you already played an hour... it's my turn". That meant, finish level and/or save and let your sibling have a go. Whining brought you nowhere, because mom or dad would invariably take the side of the person that had played least.
No things regulated "playing time" quite fairly and the net result was that we played each about 1 hour to 1.5 hours a day. Pretty much what the article stated.
Now as for violence and/or sex in videogames. My parents never forbade any games. We had the full programme Wolfenstein 3D, Doom, etc... Blood and gore were not a problem. (Heck, later we loved to play a game called "Blood"... Good times!) In the early days we mostly played Sierra games (a dying breed... alas...) and it helped us (okay, perhaps just me) learn English. I sat there for hours with my dutch-english dictionary. Fun times... We also had stuff like Strip poker and our good old Leisure Suit Larry.
The only thing I remember is that my dad forbade Syndicate... Or better said, we had to play it with headphones. He abhorred the sound of the people burning when using the flamethrower.
The main problem is not the nature of the game. Wolfenstein let us kill humans after all. Except, they didn't look much like humans then, did they? A current game with current graphics is way closer to reality than whatever we had.
On the other hand, I think kids tend to be self-regulating in what they want to do. Younger kids simply won't be interested in shooting people/aliens. They will probably go for the more colourful games. I see this when my fathers in laws kids from his second wife are here. They never ask to put stuff like GTA3, even if I let them choose from my PlayStation2 library. It's always stuff like Kya [wikipedia.org], eyeToy Groove or Sonic Heroes.
Teenagers will probably love stuff like GTA3, Halo, whatever... but there all bets are off. You cannot control them. They already watch violent movies, they play the games you don't want them to play at friends. In the teenage years, parents have to let loose slowly but surely. Something I also learnt from my parents. (Note that when we got a computer, we were pretty much teenagers)
I know you can tell by now that I think my parents did a great job.... I plan to inspire me as much as possible from what I learnt from then.
There is no right age (Score:4, Interesting)
FWIW, Crecente seems to have some pretty reasonable rules here.
Hmm (Score:3, Interesting)
"Why censor children's [media]; kids have violent! Honestly, a child will see more blood spilled than most people in their adult years outside of war and medicine. Children are naturally violent creatures."
Note: not exact quote.
You get to be an innocent child ONCE! (Score:4, Interesting)
Unfortunately too many adults take this opportunity away from their children by exposing them to the violence and stupidities of humanity WAY TOO EARLY. Yes the violence and stupidity of humanity is real, and out there in the world, and it always has been...
What's the damn rush to expose children to it?
(And I'm still pissed off at the idiot parents who brought their toddler to the Planet of the Apes remake at 10:00 pm.)
Re:My vision on things (Score:5, Interesting)
In that case, the message is simple: Raise your children well....
Easy to say, of course... Difficult to put into practice.
Just Get Involved With Your Kids (Score:3, Interesting)
Unfortunately, my son quickly learned that there were cheat codes out there, so a lot of my hopes at a learning experience went out the window.
There are some games I keep away from him, such as the Carmageddon and Grand Theft series, along with the ever-popular Postal series.
Every step of the way, I know what he's playing, and we talk about it. We don't play against each other because the one time we did he kicked my butt. But otherwise, we're on the same wavelength. We generally play the same games, and talk the same language about them, even though he's 40 years younger than I am.
Games are no more violent than television, and in one way, they're less violent, because when playing a game, the kid is at least in some control. The parent just has to pick the games, and stay involved with the kids. Neither computers nor televisions are baby sitters, and parents who use them as such get the ba****ds they deserve.
But I'm still not gonna let him play Postal -- not until he reaches 65. There have to be *some* limits, you know!
Parents bred up on games makes poor parents (Score:2, Interesting)
Problem is, if you think your parents stink as a kid, how would you like having video-game junkies as parents?
(Note there are always exceptions to any rule or hypothesis, every human is unique and no labels should be applied. Just think of this as an enlightening exercise in how you would really like to live your life.)
It doesn't follow... (Score:5, Interesting)
...that just because you abhor violence, sex, etc., in your media that 'Sin City', 'Doom' et al. are not good. It simply means they are uninteresting to you. It has nothing to do with class, and everything to do with age-appropriateness. Sin City and Doom are bad movies/games to be showing a kindergartener. Beyond that, you are just being snobby. (P.S. I'm pretty sure the arcade became a ghost town not because of violence, but because kids all of a sudden had access to games of similar quality right at their house or their friends' houses, with video game consoles and serious video-capable PCs).
There are, and always have been fun, interesting games that had no element of violence in them. Pinball is a good example (interestingly, Centipede is not, unless we don't care so long as it's violence against things not human, in which case you shouldn't care about Doom either). So was Myst (a personal fav). But there is no magical exclusionary rule that says if there are elements of violence, sex, and profanity a game is automatically bad and/or boring. The Longest Journey was a great game, but was full of profanity and had a good bit of the other two. Half-life and its sequel were both groundbreaking and engaging story-wise, but chock full of violence. Sin City was a fantastic movie, if for nothing else the artistic direction that was taken, but also the stories are quite gripping (and also inherently moral in dramatistic ways; you know, the same way Shakespeare's plays were morally tinged even though they were chock full of violence, sex, and profanity...).
Besides, all the good ol' games you seem bent on being nostalgic about are available in Flash or Java on the net somewhere or other. So, it's not like these options are forever lost to a parent trying to entertain a child age-appropriately.
Re:My vision on things (Score:3, Interesting)
For the first part of that; `Don't feed a coin slot.` is the morale of my story and the grease that helped bring the console into my home.
For the second part of that; It ain't the frags that worry me, it's the gibs that raise red flags with me.
What about parents who don't play at all? (Score:3, Interesting)
http://www.networkworld.com/community/?q=node/136
Isn't the nature of parenthood hypocritical? (Score:4, Interesting)
It's the same for alcohol. We got drunk on our ass at 16, most of us got away with it, and we think we were *special* and could handle it. Our kids? Those morons couldn't handle a sip of ceremonial wine before they turn 21.
Video games. Driving fast. Ditching school. Going out in the woods with some dynamite and blowing shit up. (OK, that last one was pretty personal, I guess.) No matter the subject, we simply don't think our kids can do the things we did. We're hypocrites. All parents are and always have been.
Adults have no respect for children so we treat them differently than we still think we should have been treated when we were their age.
Hypocrisy and lack of respect from parents towards children? This is news? Is this surprising to anyone?
Re:My vision on things (Score:3, Interesting)
Civ for the win! (Score:1, Interesting)
As for FPS, I'd let him play Halo as soon as he can (on a PC though)- I don't want my kids to be console addicts- they'll be able to play ANY game they want so long as they know how to install the game AND it involves a keyboard. It was a pretty proud moment when my 5yr old figured out how to install LEGO Star Wars. Heh- the first words he learned how to read were Load and Save.
As another poster suggested, I also use games to teach the "Good vs Evil" thing- Halo is especially good for that actually. I totally draw the line at GTA though- and honestly would never play the game myself.
Re:You get to be an innocent child ONCE! (Score:3, Interesting)
This is the first, last and only time in history where such a made-up thing as innocence has even been available for children. Get over it. Kids are going to see violence and do violence no matter what. They're going to bang at twelve, smoke pot at thirteen and get drunk at fourteen. And there's nothing anyone can do about it (no matter what you think), so we should accept it, attempt to mitigate any negatives, and move on with our lives.
Re:My vision on things (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:The world is a big and scary place (Score:3, Interesting)
I am about as anti-statist as one gets and you know...I really have trouble blaming the state for that one. I think technology like games has evolved to attract us and fill up our leisure time.
Its like cheese cake. Its not the nutritional value of it that makes your mouth water. Its the fact that it was made with all the triggers that make it feel good in your mouth and just yummy as hell, its really hacking you rbrain to send you the "hungry eat that" signals, even though really... the body doesn't need it.
I think video games do similar things to other parts of the brain. Get the adreanalin pumping, that sort of thing.
I have touble blaming the state for people making poor time management decisions or feeling they have "lost purpose" (which supposedly existed int he past, at least, thats what all the books and movies tell us).
I think this is far more a case of selective memory and poor decision making faculties than really the fault of the state. That said... smash the state!
-Steve
Half the problem... (Score:5, Interesting)
I don't know about the rest of society, but my genetic code has not degraded to that point. While I have certainly learned many things since I was 13, the only thing that prevented me from living as an adult at 13 was the artificial legal system that criminalized my age. I'm not saying that it wasn't great living for 6 years as an adult who had no responsibilities. I'm just saying that at 13 I was an adult, irrelevant to what the law said.
Re:My vision on things (Score:3, Interesting)
The workaround was to play Cowboys and "Native Americans", play soldiers, and read those evil comic books ("subversive" if you count Mad magazine, but that flew below adult radar). Lots of play that mimicked fantasy and real violent behavior.
Most folks turned out okay, except that when some of us had kids we forgot what it was like to BE one!
Re:My vision on things (Score:3, Interesting)
I started gaming off with arcade classics on a 8088. Galaxian, Dig Dug and the like. My parents didn't become concerned about violent video games until Wolfenstien and Doom came around. They didnt' much like those games but didn't mind Red Baron, Xwing and Civilazaion.
I loved to tell them how many kills I had in Red Baron or what the standard crew complement of a Star Destroyer was while blowing it up or what the aproximate population was of a city I was dropping a nuke on in Civ.
The argument was that Doom and such were up close and personal and that's what made them more "violent". I told my parents the people in the other games were just as dead and there were more of them. I wonder if I will have similar arguments with my daugter? I guess I'll just have to wait and see.
my kids (Score:4, Interesting)
Some things I have noticed:
They know the difference between games and real life, the routinely gib people in Quake, headshot people in CS, wipe out creeps in WC3 (when we all play together), but in school they get good grades and their teachers love them (no behavior problems), I know this because my wife works in the same school they attend and is privy to all of the lunch room commentary by their teachers.
When they play these games their mindsets and preferences are mirrored in the game, not the other way around. This is the biggest point I can make.. games are a way for them to express themselves, I don't see any "conditioning" that should be prevalent if you are to believe video game alarmists (E.G. Jack Thompson)
E.G. My second youngest (girl) likes to drive around GTA3 in a firetruck or ambulence doing the side missions helping people.. she doesn't gun people down/kill hookers/ etc.. in fact she berates me for not obeying the speed limit when I play.
When playing CS she likes the surf maps (where you glide around a map in a race type setting) and barely (if at all) tries to shoot anyone or fight in general. Same for Warcraft, she likes the maps where you build towns or can generate unlimited creeps and walk them around the map (no objective). In real life she loves animals, being social, and helping people...
With my son he likes to play games (CS/quake) with other people and make friendships in game, leaves if the competition is too tough and avoids conflict, and tries to help people who don't know how to do X in a game. He is the same way when playing with kids on the play ground at school.
I have never seen an increase in violent tendencies in their interactions with each other or other kids (like the neighbors, at school etc...) as a result of playing these games.
So there ya go.. btw, I have been playing video games since Doom first came out, so they have been around these games for ALL of their lives, if there was some kind of influence you would expect it to be manifested in some visable way?
I might be biased so I offer this as well, my wife doesn't play any games at all but shes their behavior constantly every day, she doesn't have any problems with them playing these games nor has she seen any changes in their behavior due to their playing them more often.
Re:Half the problem... (Score:2, Interesting)
Re:My vision on things (Score:4, Interesting)
So, when we had the action figures in our grasp, people got wasted all the time. That's just one of many things. We did Cowboys and Indians, soldiers, knights in shining armor, Star Wars, whatever. The object for my brother and me, as well as any of our typical male friends, was the KILL THE BAD GUY. Given our evolutionary background, this isn't all that peculiar. Boys have been doing this for... well... I would guess throughout our whole existence. Even my sister, having two older brothers, did the same stuff. She turned out all right too.
Hell, my dad, once we got to be around 7 or 8ish used to read us fantasy novels in chunks rather than children's books. He read the Hobbit to my brother and me as well as the Iron Tower Trilogy. The latter had quite a bit of violence in it.
And I have to say this, children have vivid imaginations. My brother did, my sister did and I did. Scary graphics on the computer, no matter how realistic, have got nothing on what I could and did form in my own head. Although, with that said, I don't think putting a 5-year-old in front of GTA3 is a good idea either. Is there an age? No. You need to know your own kid and his/her level of maturity. The biggest problem we seem to have today is that parents want other organizations and technology to raise their kids.
I think this society has become way too paranoid. WAY too paranoid. As a joke, my sister got me a DVD with some old He-Man episodes on it the other day and my friends and I sat down and watched it for a good laugh. Given the freakish religious state of the nation right now, I can just see massive protests about Skeletor's staff with the Ram's Head on it and all the "evil magic."
Really, what it's come down to, is that no one wants to take responsibility for a damn thing any more. If a kid goes bonkers... it's not his fault, it can't be that his parents were crap parents, it can't be that being abused by school mates breaks people, it can't be teachers or administrators that did nothing about it... let's blame the faceless video game makers and gun makers and people who make violent movies. It's ridiculous, absolutely ridiculous. When I was a kid, when I did something dumb or hurt someone else, my dad belted me and that was that. I didn't go into therapy to discuss my feelings. THe belting was quick, simple and did the trick.
Re:Half the problem... (Score:3, Interesting)
On the other hand- I have a brother who is currently 17, and he is not ready to leave the nest, not by a long shot. Even basic stuff like laundry and cooking simple meals totally confounds him (Easy Mac doesn't count- at least Romen requires you to learn how to boil water).
Like any lawyer will tell you: it depends.
When I was about 12 I spent a summer with a cousin who really loved throwing his pocket knives at animals- squirrels, frogs, other kids, etc. He didn't own a computer or NES, didn't play violent video games. Is anyone suprised to learn that he was eventually sent to prison for beating up a girlfriend? Something was very wrong there, but no video game can be blamed.
On the other hand, at 12 years old I used my pocket knife to fillet fish all the time. I never used it as a weapon, I considered it a tool. I only cut up fish I caught, and only to eat them (mmm-mmm, Manitoba walleye).
I would be tempted to say "I had good parents", but I didn't. Like most of you, my parents split up when I was very little. So why did I learn self-reliance while my cousin and brother did not? Honestly, I can't be sure.
But I would wager my love of "Faxanadu" for the NES had very little to do with it.
No shooting of humans (Score:2, Interesting)
I did allow one exception for the cartoony "Destroy All Humans" game, where invading aliens zap laser beams from their UFO's at crowds of fleeing people, making them disappear in a puff of smoke. But we have successfully held out against the 007 types of games as well as Grand Theft Auto and other obviously anti-social or gory titles.
I don't buy them any realistic toy guns either. We have real guns stored under lock and key, and the children are well versed in how to handle and shoot them safely. We don't want the two confused. They have some neon colored water soakers for the pool and that's about it.
-ccm